Indian billionaire Mukesh
Ambani’s Reliance Jio Platforms is gearing up to seek regulatory
approvals for a Mumbai listing, in what is likely to be the
biggest-ever stock offering in the country.
Here are facts and numbers on Jio Platforms, which houses
the world’s second-largest telecom company by users after China
Mobile.
TELECOM BUSINESS
Reliance Jio Platforms is a unit of Ambani’s oil-to-retail
conglomerate Reliance Industries. It is most known for
the telecom business – Reliance Jio Infocomm, which is the
country’s biggest player with more than 500 million subscribers.
Launched in 2016, the telecom business, popularly just
called Jio, hit rivals such as Bharti Airtel and
Vodafone-Idea hard by offering free voice and data
plans initially.
The move, in line with Ambani’s typical strategy of offering
ultra-low prices to lure consumers, drove up its customer base
and allowed many Indians to access platforms such as YouTube and
Facebook for the first time.
Jio says it currently has a roughly 60% share of India’s
data traffic.
In recent years, Reliance Jio Platforms has diversified
beyond telecom into AI, cloud and enterprise network services,
as well as app development. In 2023, Nvidia announced
AI partnership with Reliance to develop cloud infrastructure and
language models.
THE LEADERSHIP
Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s richest man, is the chairman of Jio
Platforms. His three children – Akash, Anant and Isha – serve on
its board. Akash Ambani, his elder son, is the chairman of the
company’s flagship telecom unit, Reliance Jio Infocomm.
Reliance Industries holds 66.43% stake in Jio Platforms.
Kiran Thomas is the CEO of Jio Platforms.
KEY FINANCIALS, VALUATION
Reliance Jio Platforms’ operating revenue in the last
financial year ending March 2025 stood at $13.65 billion. But
90% of that came just from the telecom business, which the
company says has grown annually by 13% since 2020-21.
Reliance Jio Platforms posted a profit after tax of $2.8
billion in the year.
In November, investment bank Jefferies estimated that
Reliance Jio’s valuation stood at $180 billion. Sources told
Reuters in January the IPO could be worth as much as $4 billion,
though final numbers will only be decided later.
MARQUEE INVESTORS
In 2020, Jio Platforms raised more than $20.5 billion from
13 global investors in exchange for a roughly 33% equity stake,
at a valuation range of $57 billion to $65 billion.
Global names such as Meta Platforms, Alphabet
and KKR invested in the firm, as Ambani sought to turn
Jio Platforms into the centerpiece of his technology ambitions.
Other investors include General Atlantic, Silver Lake and
the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Meta owns a 9.9% stake in
the company, followed by Google’s 7.7% stake.
THE IPO JOURNEY
The filing, which had been targeted for as early as March,
has been pushed back as IPO activity slowed following the
outbreak of the conflict in West Asia, with investors losing
their appetite for new listings.
The IPO, previously expected to be a pure offer-for-sale
where foreign investors would have sold some of their holdings,
is now being planned as a fundraising, aiming to issue shares
worth 2.5% of the company’s size.
The company’s IPO has been long delayed. In 2019, Ambani
said Jio would “move towards” a listing within five years, but
later the plans were delayed in 2025.
The company has hired 17 banks to manage its offering.